A change in the weather

There are, of course, many hotter places than Beijing. And many places where it gets far more humid. And a few of them, no doubt, are also seething 10-million-plus megalopolises with appalling pollution.

But I'm sometimes tempted to think that Beijing may be almost unique in its July/August combination of extremely hot and extremely humid and extremely polluted. And you can add to that an oppressive overcast that often limits light levels to a perpetual dusk for days at a time.

On top of all that, this summer we've had an uncanny lack of refreshing rainfall. We've had many days of overcast skies, many instances of thundery-looking clouds massing overhead.... but no rain. July is usually one of the wettest months of the year in this arid city (second only to August, I think), with late-afternoon thunderstorms an almost-daily occurrence. And the cloud-seeding is so over-zealous in these parts that any reasonably likely-looking bunch of clouds obligingly deposits its moisture on the city. If the weather websites are citing rain probability predictions of 10% or better, then we usually know there's a very good chance of rain; if the percentage is 30%, then a downpour is a racing certainty. But several times over this past month, we've had rain likelihoods of 30% or more quoted, and the rain has mysteriously passed us by. A few times we've had a taunting spattering of fat, warm raindrops in the mid-evening, but they haven't developed into a proper shower. Yesterday lunchtime's brief but vigorous drenching was the first major rainfall we've had in about a month.

But, even without rain, the weather broke emphatically on Saturday. Prior to that, we'd suffered two weeks - maybe nearer three - of the humidity percentage being almost continuously in the 70s or 80s, and often often surging into the 90s.

Since then, it's been..... well, it's still not likely to dip below 70 degrees Fahrenheit at night; during the day it's going to get well above 80, maybe into the very high 80s if we have a significant spell of clear sky in the middle of the day; the breezes haven't been that brisk; and the humidity is still around 50% most of the time, sometimes even higher.

But let me tell you, after the last few weeks, this feels balmy, this feels mild, this feels like a goddamned COLD SHOWER. It's glorious.

And, of course, it can't last: August is usually an even shittier month than July in Beijing. Let us enjoy this untypical respite while we may.